“You can’t make grazing decisions while standing on concrete.”

These are the words of Teagasc’s John Maher, speaking at a spring grazing farm walk in Clare on Wednesday.

He said this standing in Tom Garry’s farmyard, overlooking the Shannon estuary in Ballynacally in Co. Clare. Looking out over the paddocks, there were ponds of water visible in some fields. But alongside the water the freshly calved cows were out grazing and no damage was being done.

“If you stayed in the yard and looked out you’d say that it was definitely too wet to graze, spread fertiliser or spread slurry. But because Tom walks his fields he knows that where the cows are now is dry for grazing,” John said.

Tom will milk about 80 cows this year and over 80% are due to calve soon. A crowd of about 80 farmers assembled in the yard next to the calving pens to hear from local advisor Aidan Bugler and Grass10 co-ordinator John Maher.

Tom has been out by day since last Thursday. This time last year his stock was out day and night and once the weather picks up Tom will do the same. At the moment he is on/off grazing.

Cows are in on silage at night time. He milks them in the morning and leaves them in the yard without access to silage until 11 or 12 o’clock. They then go out to the dry paddock with a cover of about 700kg/ha.

“As soon as they lift their heads and start walking around I will bring them in. This is usually after around two or three hours. If they don’t go out hungry or if you don’t bring them in when they’re full they’ll do damage,” Tom says.

Tom is currently milking the cows once a day but will up that to twice a day from 1 March.

“I milked once a day in February last year as I hurt my back and just couldn’t do it twice a day. I found I was in much better form, less tired and less stressed, so I’m doing it again this year,” Tom says.

When asked if it affected milk production at peak, Tom said the first cow calved in 2017 was a heifer and she ended up yielding 1,500 gallons so he didn’t think ithad much of an impact. His black and white herd averaged 475kg of milk solids per cow from 580kg of meal in 2017. The farm grew just over 13t/ha of grass.

Planning

Aidan Bugler went through the spring rotation planner. Tom should have 30% of his 25 hectare farm (7.5 hectares) grazed by 7 March. He should have 60%, or 15 hectares, grazed by 21 March and should start the second round in early April.

Nitrogen

Referring to nitrogen, John Maher said that grass needs its breakfast now.

John says that if you can travel on land it should get either slurry or urea as soon as possible. He said that 30 or 40 units/acre of urea should be spread now.

He said grass will need its lunch in early March: “There should be 70 units of nitrogen spread by 1 April, whether that’s urea or slurry.”

Another Grass10 walk is being held on Thursday on the farm of Philip Ruttle, Rathkeale, Co Limerick.

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